Today I am grateful for Christmas lights. Oops! She slipped back a few weeks in some sort of twisted time warp this time. Not so. But as I’m taking the decorations down I’m realizing, once again, how much I like pretty lights. I just do.

I admit in my self-induced glut of awful Christmas movies, the lights got a bit much. I mean, the young woman shows up at a palace or cottage or whatever and walks into the bedroom and there are not only six Christmas trees in it, but lights are strung all over the headboard, footboard, tables, windows, dresser and probably toilet. Geeze. I couldn’t help but imagine myself trying to sleep in that mess. I’d be strung-up and strung-out looking like the box of last years tangled lights. All I’d need is a new fuse. Or to just throw me out and buy new. Planned obsolescence. Ho-ho-ho.

But those little white lights create a special ambiance and I love them. You might, too, but not even realize it. You know that restaurant you frequent, that makes you feel cozy in winter and free as a bird in summer? Well they probably have little white lights strung somewhere all year long.

Teenagers decorating their rooms for the first time often use a lot of little lights intertwined among the posters of performing artists I’ve never heard of. Why? Because they create an atmosphere of joy.

Maybe nursing homes for the elderly should use them, too. Why not brighten up the lives of people who are sad at the loss of so much as they age? Surround a poster of Mae West or Frank Sinatra and give ‘em something positive to remember.

I have little white lights that I left up all year round last year and I’m leaving up again this year, because I’m calling my place a fancy-schmancy restaurant, so there. I love my front kitchen window, with the white curtains and lace on the shelf, underneath tea pots from Indonesia and strewn with white lights.

When I’m sitting in the living room and look towards the kitchen, they brighten up an otherwise dull winter night. So they stay up. What about you? Is there someplace that a little extra light would make you feel like winter wasn’t quite so gloomy? Do you want to leave some lights up? Why don’t you? It’s your home and you can do what you want, Christmas lights or not! You decide.